9 projects top of mind for IT leaders today

CIOs say they recognize the continuing need to be flawless at the IT fundamentals in order to move their organizations into the future.

8. IT modernization

All that work on the fundamentals doesn’t mean CIOs accept the status quo; in fact, IT leaders are eager to remake their tech stacks with modern capabilities and are making it a major part of their work schedule.

For Joshua Bellendir, SVP of IT and CIO at WHSmith North America, that means “retiring old legacy systems that are slowing us down, introducing modern solutions, and building foundational data and system layers. Everything we do — modernizing, cloud-first — will support our data initiative and will give us the data we want for AI and allow us to scale and the business to grow.”

Accenture’s Patel says demand for scalable, regionally adaptive IT cores, regulatory pressures, and data sovereignty drive much of today’s modernization efforts.

CIOs are moving to modular, cloud-first architectures tailored to regional needs as well as an “asset-right” strategy balancing cloud and owned infrastructure, he adds.

Modernization, however, is not an easy task, Patel says, as fragmented legacy estates, vendor lock-in, and limited cloud-readiness of core business applications create significant challenges.

9. Reimagining IT for the future

Bellendir isn’t just modernizing WHSmith North America’s IT infrastructure; he’s future-proofing it by, for example, moving to microservices and other approaches and technologies that will better support business goals — such as enhanced CX — in the upcoming years.

“We’re building a foundation for the future, so we can do whatever we want to do; that’s key to my strategy at present,” he says. “From an IT project and systems perspective, future-built is really specific to our specific business, where we are going and what we are planning to do.”

He adds: “I think we’re well positioned with the investments we’ve made at this point.”

Patel agrees with the need for future-proofing and “reinventing the tech-operating model.”

“Traditional IT structures can’t support the pace of change,” he says. “We’re seeing a pivot toward AI-first operating models — leaner teams, flattened hierarchies, and a human-plus-machine approach to delivery. CIOs are becoming architects of organizational agility.”